Sports Day

The last week of the school year kicked off (literally) with us all traveling out to our sister campus for a day spent playing a lot of games on the open fields, mostly fireball, kickball and capture the ball before segueing into the track and field competition.  At the end of the day, the kids are exhausted but really excited about the day they just spent with their friends in friendly competition.  In fact, MadHatter has been talking about the sprint relay rematch between her and her friend W almost since the second last years Sports Day finished up.

The girls made their way to school as usual because even though I was driving out to the main campus also, they wanted to ride the busses with their friends.  I arrived before they did (which was the plan as I was to photograph them all arriving and then for the day).  Stinkerbell came ready to go!

They quickly found their friends and then broke off into their teams to play a round robin of different games.  A side note about the teams - Each year, the school is split into four house colors - red, yellow, blue and green.  Each house collects points throughout the year based on participation in different PE challenges and on spirit days. The competition can be very close right up until Sports Day when the winner of the year is finally decided.  Siblings are always placed in the same house color to prevent rivalry and foster teamwork and once you are assigned a color you stay that color throughout your time at school.  Houses are a great way to help the kids get to know and work with each other, no matter what grade they are in.  On Sports Day the games are played house against house but are grouped by grade.  So, the 3rd graders all play against each other as 4 different teams, the 4th/5th graders play other 4th/5th graders.  It keeps the competitions fair for all.

The morning was spent running away from the ball in capture the ball, running base to base but not past the base in fireball and kicking the ball as far as they could in kickball.  

 We took a snack break (where I got a snuggle) and then were back at it again with track and field games.  We had the long jump, javalin, 120m race, discus, the relay races and the most anticipated preliminary race - the 80 m dash (87 yards).

 She blew them away in the 120!  That girl is fast...

   

 Stinkerbell placed 2nd in her heat of the 80m dash but it wasn't fast enough to get her to the finals.  Which she was quite happy with actually as she said she was done racing for the day.

 MadHatter on the other hand placed first in her heat and that automatically put her in the finals.

And she was ecstatic about that!

 When her final finally came up she was prepared and ran a great race but as you can see by this photo she was just a hair behind in a photo finish.  According to the timer, it was so close they had to replay it several times to get the winner.  This is exactly what happened last year also.  I think we just have to agree that W and MadHatter are pretty darn fast!

What a fabulous way to spend a Monday!!!